Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Who Is Fueling The Igbo-Yoruba Feud?

The feud between the Igbo and the Yoruba ethnic groups
is con­trived, just like the feud between the Igbo and the Ikwere. Whenever
these feuds take centrestage, the impetus is invariably traceable to the
divide-and-rule imperative, which inevitably profits the oligarchy of northern Nigeria. Every
other explanation ad­duced in the explanation of the phenomenon can only be pe­ripheral.
It is important to make this point from the outset, be­fore going about the
business of explanations – for the benefit of those who may genuinely be ig­norant
of a crucial factor in the continued inability to resolve some of the more critical
of Ni­geria’s
contradictions.

Femi Aribisala, one of the more perceptive of the
motley coterie of columnists currently on the national stage, discussed the
origins and manifestations of this feud in an incisive article entitled Time
To End The Bad Blood Between The Yorubas And Ndigbo (Vanguard January 12, 2016). “What is the basis of all this hate?” Mr.
Aribisala asks. “In the sixties, the Igbo
were slaughtered in pogroms in the North. However, the principal exchange of
hateful words today is not between Northerners and Easterners, but between East­erners
and Westerners. Why are these two ethnic groups so much at loggerheads?”

The straightforward answer is that it serves the
interest of the “core” North to keep the South permanently in mutually assured
destructive contention on largely immaterial issues. It happened between the
Igbo and the old RiversState in the wake of the
Nigerian civil war. It was suddenly and conveni­ently “discovered” that the Ik­werre
were not and had never been Igbo. The people went into a flourish of
re-spelling: Umuomasi became Rumuo­masi; Umukrushi became Ru­mukrushi; Umuola
became Rumuola; Umueme became Rumueme. In truth, all these represent no more
than dis­tinct dialectal spellings of Igbo root names typical to the areas
around Port Harcourt.
But the re-spelling exercise was used to manufacture an entirely new ethnic
group.

The acclaimed writer, Pro­fessor (Captain) Elechi
Amadi, who led the group that lent intellectual weight to this fad, went
further to celebrate in fictional terms the political marriage between Rivers
peo­ple and Northern Nigeria. Yet, he did not see fit to change his name to
Relechi Ramadi. Of course, the contrived ethnic dissonance achieved its pur­pose.
While the fight raged re­lentlessly on “Abandoned
Prop­erties”, mostly mud houses over three decades old, the “core” North
moved in and harvested the oil rewards. Their members became instant
millionaires by being allocated shiploads of crude, which they sold off at the
Rotterdam Spot Market. Fur­ther, they appropriated 99 per­cent of the oil
blocs. Then they seized Professor Tam David- West, a Rivers man, “tried” him
for causing the country “eco­nomic adversity” and handed him a tidy prison
term.

But the picture is becoming clearer. Had the black
gold been found in the “core” North, would the Rivers man have been allocated
even one per­cent of the oil blocs? It was not the Igbo that killed Major Isaac
Jasper Adaka Boro. It was not the Igbo that killed Ken Saro- Wiwa. It was not
the Igbo that banished Delta nights with the interminable flare of gas. The
Igbo was accused of desiring nothing but the expropriation of Delta oil and
gas. But science since proved that the entire Igbo country sits on oil, and
holds in its bowels the largest concentra­tion of gas on the Africa
conti­nent. That is the way everything goes and turns round.

The Delta people, previously cajoled into believing
that they had been liberated from Ndig­bo, are beginning to know dif­ferently. They have discovered their
real oppressors. President Jonathan, a Rivers man, was denied a second term in
office. His single tenure was covered in a mountain of mendacity by the
manipulators of sectional press and political blackmail. The traditional
“political allies” of the Southern minorities felt affronted by being asked to
vote a second term for one of those they claimed to have “liberated” from Igbo
clutches and talons!

It is on the same plane that the feud between
Ndigbo and the Yoruba sits today. True, prophets abound who received
messages directly from God that President Jonathan would lose his reelection
bid. But real­politik always made it obvious to informed non-prophets that no
two of the ethnic tripods of Nigerian politics could bind together without
carrying the day of national ballot. That is what the entire feud currently
playing out between the Yoru­ba and the Igbo is about. Sud­denly, it was
discovered that Ndigbo are in cahoots to adul­terate Yoruba culture! Suddenly
it was remembered that, dur­ing the 1950s, Chief Awolowo had cheated Dr.
Azikiwe of the West Regional premiership by playing the ethnic card. In the
circumstance, verbal missiles have been hitting antipodal zones with the
destructive in­sistence of heavy artillery con­centration.

While this distraction was in ascent, a leeway was
created for imbuing the ChosenOne with
the political sagacity that he so pitifully lacks. While this dis­traction
runs, the entity suffers because a divided South guar­antees less than enough
mobi­lization for a national front to push for positive movement and needed
reforms.

This is where Aribisala’s lament be­comes more
apposite: “[The Yoruba and the Igbo] prefer
a Nigeria
that practices fiscal fed­eralism. Both want a country with a weaker centre.
Both want a Nigeria
that rewards merit, with a state-structure based on resource-control. Both
groups want a Nigeria
committed to self-determination. These are grounds for cooperation as op­posed
to discord. If the North is not to continue to take the South for granted, it
must not be allowed to continue to oper­ate in the confidence that the East and
the West will always be divided.”

That is the problem. The North does not operate in the
confidence of eternal East-West dislocations. It surreptitiously incites and
nurtures them, re­motely controlling surrogates who celebrate sinecures at the
expense of self-determination and fiscal independence! That is why, despite
Aribisala’s real­ism, Northern pragmatism will ensure that the contrived Yoru­ba-Igbo
discord does not abate. If anything, it is set to escalate. One only needs to
critically examine the true nature of the Government of Change since served
Nigerians on a platter of media overkill, to fully un­derstand the state of
play. Des­potism is staging a comeback, propped up by a – not the – Yoruba
media, which objecti­fies its permutations and pre­dilections through a
virulent antipathy for Ndigbo.

This ensures the attenuation of pressure from the Chosen One. There is firmly in place an
abundance of menopausal professors of Law rabidly jus­tifying the unfolding,
visceral string of disobediences to court injunctions. The allegiance to true
fiscal federalism, a central plank of the Yoruba profession of a continued
corporate Nige­ria,
has all but been deliberately diminished. And, generally obfuscating every
space for ra­tional thinking and committed leadership, is the conundrum of
trial by media. Those who have been setting the national clock back by decades
confuse them­selves by thinking that they are getting one back on the PDP. That
is false. What they are do­ing is simply intensifying the artificial war
between the Igbo and the Yoruba, in order that those born to rule would hold
permanent sway. Yet, there is a redeeming feature in this mo­rass crassness –
the very fact that everything goes and turns round.

*Mr. Chuks Iloegbunam, an eminent essayist, journalist and author of several books, writes
column on the back page of The Authority newspaper every Tuesday.